The Netflix Series ‘Cursed’ Causes Two Reviewers To Give Up

I tried to watch the new Netflix show Cursed because it is right in my wheelhouse. A different take on the Arthurian legend, specifically the Lady of the Lake and the sword Excalibur, Cursed on paper seems like it was made for me. I love books like Parke Godwin’s Firelord or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s (yes, bad person but good creation) Mists of Avalon. It is hard to describe how disappointed I was.

Well, not really — I bailed on the show halfway into the first episode. So, pretty easy to describe how disappointed I was, I guess.

I posted in our team Facebook group asking if anyone else wanted to give it a try, and Luis of Crash: The Photos valiantly stepped up to the plate. I wish I could say I was surprised when, a few days later, he told me he couldn’t make it through the whole season, giving up a little less than halfway through.

So here is my review of Cursed, based on roughly 25 minutes of total watch time. I didn’t need any more. And yes it will be spoilery for the first episode, but really, will anyone care?

In Cursed, the talented Katherine Langford (Love, Simon; 13 Reasons Why; Knives Out) plays Nimue, one of the two names most typically associated with the Lady of the Lake character in the old versions of Arthurian tales (Viviane, the other and less common one, comes from the French sources that expanded the Arthur legends into the romantic tales we know today). She is the daughter of one of the leaders of a village of magic-using Britons but her fellow villagers think she is cursed (“That’s the name of the thing!” – studio executive guy) because her magic is apparently dark in nature and difficult to control.

The previous woman who was the chief priestess type of the village recently died and in a magical ceremony at her cremation, some mystical forces choose Nimue to be the next priestess type, which many of the village elders object to. Nimue tells them all to go pound sand (figuratively) and leaves the village — but not before a group of red robe-clad fanatical Christian zealot warriors (who are definitely NOT the Spanish Inquisition) attack the village and Nimue and her best friend barely escape.

We next get introduced to Merlin, a drunken wreck of a man, in a scene in a tavern so laughably like a bad Dungeons and Dragons campaign it hurt to watch. Which is too bad, because Merlin is played by Gustaf Skarsgård, who was wonderful as Floki in the History Channel series Vikings (hmm, maybe good writing helps good actors).

Jumping back to Nimue, she and her friend Pym are now in a larger town and encounter Arthur, who, for some reason is a random dude singing with a street bard. Arthur tries to pick up the attractive Nimue with some of the most cliched dialogue ever written to try to show a character as “smooth with the ladies.” Seriously, if this came directly from the Thomas Wheeler – Frank Miller graphic novel the series was based on, clearly Wheeler has never once tried to pick up a woman. Since Wheeler’s writing credits are only The LEGO Ninjago Movie and Puss in Boots, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Sadly, the production values are no better than the dialogue. Just one example: When we first see Nimue she is riding a horse toward her village, seen in the background down in a valley as a pretty typical-looking early medieval village. The episode then jumps right to her in the village, which is now a bunch of small huts in a heavily forested rocky chasm. It looks absolutely nothing like the green-screen village we were shown literally seconds before. That level of awful production value permeates the series (OK, the first 25 minutes of the first episode) from the costume design to the bad line readings to the incredibly cheesy magical creature special effects.

I was cursed to try to watch Cursed and you will be too if you give it a go. What a shame to see some really talented actors mired down in this awful mess. I give Cursed (based on only 25-ish minutes of the first episode) a generous 1.5 out of 5.

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